ESPN comments on Curt Schilling being cut from revised 30 for 30

To get viewers ready for a “Sunday Night Baseball” game between the Yankees and Red Sox on Sunday, ESPN aired their “Four Days in October” 30 for 30 documentary that was released in 2010. The “Four Days in October” program recounts the Red Sox’s incredible comeback in the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees in which they became the first team to ever rally back from an 0-3 series deficit. However, there was one big part of the documentary noticeably missing: Curt Schilling’s bloody sock game.

Schilling was a huge part of the series as he threw the infamous bloody sock game to beat the Yankees in Game 6, forcing a Game 7. That part was cut from the program leading up to Sunday’s game, which was a revised edition of the documentary because a softball game being aired on the network prior to the 30 for 30 program happened to run long.

That left many wondering whether cutting Schilling was done intentionally by ESPN because of their recent issues with him.

ESPN addressed the matter in a statement to SI’s Richard Deitsch:

“When a live event runs long, it’s standard procedure to shorten a taped program that follows. In this case, we needed to edit out one of the film’s four segments to account for the extra length of the softball game.”

The statement only notes that the program was truncated without explaining the thought process behind which parts were cut out.

Schilling did not think his glory moment being cut from the program was a coincidence.

Wow, full one year complete fabrication to defame greatest QB, now omitting about 4 hours of a game I think I played in. Hmm #integritymuch?

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) May 2, 2016

Schilling was fired by ESPN recently for making an anti-transgender post on Facebook and defending it. That was the latest in a long string of political statements made by the former pitcher while being employed by ESPN.